mister average guy was also carrying a $900 pistol
No, what's you've described is a one to one or one to two showdown. Imagine if every other person in the cafe pulls out some iron. Ah, yes, much more effective deterrent. Check crime statistics for cities in states that have very loose concealed carry laws, say Phoenix, versus San Fransisco.
Contract and intellectual property laws govern how private individual entities behave towards one another; it has nothing to do with "questioning government". You comment is like saying you're glad the neighborhood teens blast hip-hop at 150db out of their cars despite a quiet-time ordinance because it teaches them to "question government" when really it just teaches them to have no respect for others.
It makes perfect sense that music/movies/software companies want their cut for making whatever product even though their distribution and/or pricing models may suck from some points of view. Only the most hard core socialists think otherwise.
This is all very fine and good but what I really want is to use my credit union's website with something other than IE. Alas, whatever microsoft extensions they use prevent my doing so. The problem is less that a given browser won't display rare font/layout X properly but that some hosts use proprietary programming techniques for their website.
I (and my dad) distinctly remember me having a device called a 'Commadore Plus 4'... Could someone in the know confirm whether this really did exist or not?
What's the alternative?? You and your dad are having a shared hallucination?
And what kind of intensive care unit is "shut down" when they can't use computers? It's not like their work would have to grind to a stand still
RTFA before typing: Key cards would no longer open the operating-room doors; computers in the intensive-care unit shut down; doctors' pagers wouldn't work.
Work most certainly DOES grind to a halt when you can't even get in the door.
Shouldn't Peter Parker own the patent to this device? If so, I wondow what the police will be paying in licensing fees
I always wondered why Peter Parker was always whining about his lousy finances. In Spider-Man merchandising alone, he should be rolling in cash. Then there's the endorsements... SERIOUS bank!
Those are mutually exclusive options to freely complain to high ranking government officials and at the same time imply you have to go elsewhere to be free to do so.
Which is exactly what ought to be pointed out to everyone who objects to the RU487 (is that the right number?) pill. It is FAR more efficient and seems perfectly morally acceptable to me to take one of those than to go for a partial birth abortion seven or eight months later. Heck, I really can't think of a moral argument against those pills, although I understand some people have tortured religious objections.
The trick is that a line has to be drawn somewhere and for anywhere past the very start you can find someone with a moral objection to that small level. At some point or other, the 'human embryo does not have a brain' eventually grows one. But it's a small one at first so how big does it get before the cutoff (pun intended)? The tricky part about drawing lines anywhere but at the beginning. Personally, I'm skeptical of the arguments regarding a developing fetus's rights until the thing can live on its own, even if it has to be in an incubator. But I can see a lot of validity to the argument that drawing the line at the beginning has merit in that it prevents any slippery slope action; we've got partial birth abortions, a truly horrendous practice IMO, thanks to that slope. I think the line should definitely be well before that, but if its anywhere but the start, then little exceptions pile up over time.
Its POSSIBLE that their normal software is programmed to to not accept numbers bigger than X so they need different software for gates
The IRS doesn't track everyone's net worth; just your income. And while his net worth is hugemongous, most of it is in MS stock and therefore not realized as income until he sells some for operating cash. And unless he's hired the cheapest possible accountants then even his operating cash probably doesn't fall entirely into the taxable income bin. I bet he pays shockingly little in income tax. See: The Fair Tax for how to fix the problem of the super rich avoiding taxation.
Your post is after the SotU speech and yet you're so up on politics you feel inspired to comment that nonsense. The Congress critters knew full well what was going on and said nothing because it IS ok under the CiC clause. Of course, they all start yammering like its a big suprise for cheap political points scored with easy dupes like yourself after the NYT finally released the story after sitting on it for a year in order to get it out just before the patriot act was up for renewal. More easy points for sensationalism. Meanwhile, yes, publishing that story was a crime; the NSA had Osama's cell number back in the early 90's and listened in all the time. Then the papers leaked it and he stopped dropped the phone like a hot potato. In the mid 90's the Trade Center was bombed and we didn't know it was coming.
According to my wife, also from China, this is pretty much the case with official news. It's a jaw-dropper for my father in law to get to read external news sources when he visits USA and gets websites that aren't filtered. And from meter-maid up, it's a safe bet to assume anyone working for the government in China is on the take.
It's not just any picture of tanks; it's the picture of that guy who paused on the way home from shopping to stand in front of four tanks. You know, big metal machines that can squash a pedestrian flat without noticing? Amazingly, as famous as this picture is it is unknown inside China. My Chinese friends in college had never seen it or anything of those ill fated demonstrations despite being in Beijing when it was happening. The word on the street in town during the protests was simply that 'something is happening' and everybody better stay in their homes if they know what's good for them. The Chinese government's crackdown on the media is impressively (depressingly?) comprehensive.
all the people that want to keep some money at home can do that witout the money value rising
First, you seem to think inflation only happens as a side effect of non-metallic currencies; this is not the case at all. A useful website is Economic History and on this page you can find historic inflation rates. Put in a year during the time after WWII and before the US went off the silver standard. Amazingly, there is inflation in every year. How is that possible when a metal standard magically waves away inflation? Because metal standards DO NOT wave away inflation. The US went off the gold standard because our major trading allies were begging for it; their economies were in desperate need of interest rates differing from the US's (see my prior post).
Second, you seem to think that inflation and/or the money supply is influenced heavily by the printing of paper notes. This is not the case in a modern economy. The money supply is much more influenced by interest rates, government spending and taxation rates, and even foreign trade balances a long time before the actual printed money has an effect.
And on that note, the money supply in terms of cash in circulation is miniscule compared to the amount of money at work in the ecomony. Look up 'the money multiplier' for more info. The amount printed or coined in a modern ecomomy isn't nearly as big a concern as you seem to think except in extreme cases. And since the Federal Reserve is a private bank, not a government agency, it has the luxury of not letting the cash run amok to the point of Bad Things happening. All the Fed notes would have to be recalled or disavowed and a new government-issued money created. Tell me you think that's realistic for any elected office holder to propose.
Money is created by the government printing up treasury bills. They then sell these to the Federal Reserve, who is a captive buyer and must buy them. But the Fed is then free to either hold or sell the things on the market. The Fed holds the staggering sums in TBills in reserve, to the tune of hundreds of billions of $$. The 'poison pill' that keeps the government in line is that if they dump excessive TBills, the Fed will then dump those same TBills on the open market, ruining the value of the dollars the government wants.
Of all the things the Libertarians wring their hands over, the gold standard is the only one that seems the most misunderstood and overrated. Gold (or silver, or *insert precious metal here* standards come with their own host of problems. Here is the short, short, abbreviated case on the worst aspect of a metal standard:
Metal standards tie international currency exchange and therefore to the most desirable country's interest rates. So let's say everyone wants to trade with the USA. A dollar equals an X of gold. So if the British pound is nominally worth two dollars then a BP is also equal to X/2 of gold. Now if the US economy is doing well and interest rates are 6%, then interest rates must be 6% in England as well. If the economy is doing poorly in England then to make capital more affordable interest rates CANNOT be lowered by the Bank of England. If they did lower the rates, arbitrage trading would take place on the BP, effectively borrowing up all the pounds, converting them to dollars for short term, higher interest loans, and then converting back and paying off the pound denominated loan. This would steal away all the capital from England. So world interest rates get locked. Fiddling with interest rates is one of the strongest tools available to central banks for ameliorating business cycle swings. Take this away and you can get terrible bouts of depressions and/or stagflation that can take decades to get out of.
From the link you've provided: when the application for the order is denied, or after the expiration of 72 hours from the time of authorization by the Attorney General, whichever is earliest. In the event that such application for approval is denied, or in any other case where the electronic surveillance is terminated and no order is issued approving the surveillance, no information obtained or evidence derived from such surveillance shall be received in evidence or otherwise disclosed in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or before any court, grand jury, department, office, agency, regulatory body, legislative committee, or other authority of the United States, a State, or political subdivision thereof, and no information concerning any United States person acquired from such surveillance shall subsequently be used or disclosed in any other manner by Federal officers or employees without the consent of such person, except with the approval of the Attorney General if the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.
So the information collected isn't intended for use in any trial, proceeding, etc, and will only be actionable if it turns out to be orders to go blow up more buildings full of people. Sure sounds like one of the primary purposes of gathering foreign intelligence in the first place. Why get a warrant, whose purpose is to legitimize trials, to do these taps if it isn't headed for trial in the first place???
Everyone in this thread, including the editor, convienently leaves out the "half", as in "half domestic surveilance". When a known Al-Q person outside the USA calls or contacts someone inside, the NSA tries to listen in. So how exactly is it a huge problem that one person in the US is being spied upon because a known terrorist on a short list calls him? Tell me with a straight face anyone seriously expects the NSA get a warrant ahead of time in a world of disposable cell phones. Anyway, if Osama calls me I'd prefer the NSA listened in; I'll try to keep him on the line long enough for the Predator drone to home in on his originating signal.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget: Paying the army of tech support people to handle calls for support on a software driver the company has no idea how someone modified.
mister average guy was also carrying a $900 pistol
No, what's you've described is a one to one or one to two showdown. Imagine if every other person in the cafe pulls out some iron. Ah, yes, much more effective deterrent. Check crime statistics for cities in states that have very loose concealed carry laws, say Phoenix, versus San Fransisco.
That's easy: "Sick" lasts maybe a week or so; unions are impossible to get rid of.
I have to wonder if Plan 9 was intended to be comic
Watch 'Ed Wood' starring Johnny Depp and all your questions about Plan 9 From Outer Space will be answered.
A government research lab .. with Alienwares?
Obviously he works at Area 51.
Contract and intellectual property laws govern how private individual entities behave towards one another; it has nothing to do with "questioning government". You comment is like saying you're glad the neighborhood teens blast hip-hop at 150db out of their cars despite a quiet-time ordinance because it teaches them to "question government" when really it just teaches them to have no respect for others.
It makes perfect sense that music/movies/software companies want their cut for making whatever product even though their distribution and/or pricing models may suck from some points of view. Only the most hard core socialists think otherwise.
This is all very fine and good but what I really want is to use my credit union's website with something other than IE. Alas, whatever microsoft extensions they use prevent my doing so. The problem is less that a given browser won't display rare font/layout X properly but that some hosts use proprietary programming techniques for their website.
I (and my dad) distinctly remember me having a device called a 'Commadore Plus 4' ... Could someone in the know confirm whether this really did exist or not?
What's the alternative?? You and your dad are having a shared hallucination?
:D
And what kind of intensive care unit is "shut down" when they can't use computers? It's not like their work would have to grind to a stand still
RTFA before typing:
Key cards would no longer open the operating-room doors; computers in the intensive-care unit shut down; doctors' pagers wouldn't work.
Work most certainly DOES grind to a halt when you can't even get in the door.
People pressing for peace very rarely form the active mobs that make for interesting news.
Not here in the USA; the media's coverage of the anti-Iraq war demonstrators vastly overwhelms the coverage of supporters.
Shouldn't Peter Parker own the patent to this device? If so, I wondow what the police will be paying in licensing fees
I always wondered why Peter Parker was always whining about his lousy finances. In Spider-Man merchandising alone, he should be rolling in cash. Then there's the endorsements... SERIOUS bank!
Those are mutually exclusive options to freely complain to high ranking government officials and at the same time imply you have to go elsewhere to be free to do so.
egg != embryo
fertilized egg == embryo
Which is exactly what ought to be pointed out to everyone who objects to the RU487 (is that the right number?) pill. It is FAR more efficient and seems perfectly morally acceptable to me to take one of those than to go for a partial birth abortion seven or eight months later. Heck, I really can't think of a moral argument against those pills, although I understand some people have tortured religious objections.
So, again I ask, why is this *morally* wrong?
The trick is that a line has to be drawn somewhere and for anywhere past the very start you can find someone with a moral objection to that small level. At some point or other, the 'human embryo does not have a brain' eventually grows one. But it's a small one at first so how big does it get before the cutoff (pun intended)? The tricky part about drawing lines anywhere but at the beginning. Personally, I'm skeptical of the arguments regarding a developing fetus's rights until the thing can live on its own, even if it has to be in an incubator. But I can see a lot of validity to the argument that drawing the line at the beginning has merit in that it prevents any slippery slope action; we've got partial birth abortions, a truly horrendous practice IMO, thanks to that slope. I think the line should definitely be well before that, but if its anywhere but the start, then little exceptions pile up over time.
Nice to know a lot of my rising-ridiculously-every-year insurance premiums are going toward horridly inefficient bureaucracies
If you're bitter about this, have you written to your congresscritter to urge the repeal of "21 cfr part 11, Hippa, SOX and a list of others issues"?
Its POSSIBLE that their normal software is programmed to to not accept numbers bigger than X so they need different software for gates
The IRS doesn't track everyone's net worth; just your income. And while his net worth is hugemongous, most of it is in MS stock and therefore not realized as income until he sells some for operating cash. And unless he's hired the cheapest possible accountants then even his operating cash probably doesn't fall entirely into the taxable income bin. I bet he pays shockingly little in income tax. See: The Fair Tax for how to fix the problem of the super rich avoiding taxation.
Your post is after the SotU speech and yet you're so up on politics you feel inspired to comment that nonsense. The Congress critters knew full well what was going on and said nothing because it IS ok under the CiC clause. Of course, they all start yammering like its a big suprise for cheap political points scored with easy dupes like yourself after the NYT finally released the story after sitting on it for a year in order to get it out just before the patriot act was up for renewal. More easy points for sensationalism. Meanwhile, yes, publishing that story was a crime; the NSA had Osama's cell number back in the early 90's and listened in all the time. Then the papers leaked it and he stopped dropped the phone like a hot potato. In the mid 90's the Trade Center was bombed and we didn't know it was coming.
Thus it's orety well proven that indeed the HIV virus is the cause of AIDS.
I've read this sentence several times and can't figure out what the heck "orety well proven" means. Is it like "understanding a priori"?
your college friend is utterly retarded, to put it mildly
I ended up marrying her and she has yet to show any signs of retardation. You, on the other hand, are an utter ass, to put it mildly.
I wonder if they have the same attitude in China?
According to my wife, also from China, this is pretty much the case with official news. It's a jaw-dropper for my father in law to get to read external news sources when he visits USA and gets websites that aren't filtered. And from meter-maid up, it's a safe bet to assume anyone working for the government in China is on the take.
It's not just any picture of tanks; it's the picture of that guy who paused on the way home from shopping to stand in front of four tanks. You know, big metal machines that can squash a pedestrian flat without noticing? Amazingly, as famous as this picture is it is unknown inside China. My Chinese friends in college had never seen it or anything of those ill fated demonstrations despite being in Beijing when it was happening. The word on the street in town during the protests was simply that 'something is happening' and everybody better stay in their homes if they know what's good for them. The Chinese government's crackdown on the media is impressively (depressingly?) comprehensive.
all the people that want to keep some money at home can do that witout the money value rising
First, you seem to think inflation only happens as a side effect of non-metallic currencies; this is not the case at all. A useful website is Economic History and on this page you can find historic inflation rates. Put in a year during the time after WWII and before the US went off the silver standard. Amazingly, there is inflation in every year. How is that possible when a metal standard magically waves away inflation? Because metal standards DO NOT wave away inflation. The US went off the gold standard because our major trading allies were begging for it; their economies were in desperate need of interest rates differing from the US's (see my prior post).
Second, you seem to think that inflation and/or the money supply is influenced heavily by the printing of paper notes. This is not the case in a modern economy. The money supply is much more influenced by interest rates, government spending and taxation rates, and even foreign trade balances a long time before the actual printed money has an effect.
And on that note, the money supply in terms of cash in circulation is miniscule compared to the amount of money at work in the ecomony. Look up 'the money multiplier' for more info. The amount printed or coined in a modern ecomomy isn't nearly as big a concern as you seem to think except in extreme cases. And since the Federal Reserve is a private bank, not a government agency, it has the luxury of not letting the cash run amok to the point of Bad Things happening. All the Fed notes would have to be recalled or disavowed and a new government-issued money created. Tell me you think that's realistic for any elected office holder to propose.
Money is created by the government printing up treasury bills. They then sell these to the Federal Reserve, who is a captive buyer and must buy them. But the Fed is then free to either hold or sell the things on the market. The Fed holds the staggering sums in TBills in reserve, to the tune of hundreds of billions of $$. The 'poison pill' that keeps the government in line is that if they dump excessive TBills, the Fed will then dump those same TBills on the open market, ruining the value of the dollars the government wants.
Of all the things the Libertarians wring their hands over, the gold standard is the only one that seems the most misunderstood and overrated. Gold (or silver, or *insert precious metal here* standards come with their own host of problems. Here is the short, short, abbreviated case on the worst aspect of a metal standard:
Metal standards tie international currency exchange and therefore to the most desirable country's interest rates. So let's say everyone wants to trade with the USA. A dollar equals an X of gold. So if the British pound is nominally worth two dollars then a BP is also equal to X/2 of gold. Now if the US economy is doing well and interest rates are 6%, then interest rates must be 6% in England as well. If the economy is doing poorly in England then to make capital more affordable interest rates CANNOT be lowered by the Bank of England. If they did lower the rates, arbitrage trading would take place on the BP, effectively borrowing up all the pounds, converting them to dollars for short term, higher interest loans, and then converting back and paying off the pound denominated loan. This would steal away all the capital from England. So world interest rates get locked. Fiddling with interest rates is one of the strongest tools available to central banks for ameliorating business cycle swings. Take this away and you can get terrible bouts of depressions and/or stagflation that can take decades to get out of.
From the link you've provided:
when the application for the order is denied, or after the expiration of 72 hours from the time of authorization by the Attorney General, whichever is earliest. In the event that such application for approval is denied, or in any other case where the electronic surveillance is terminated and no order is issued approving the surveillance, no information obtained or evidence derived from such surveillance shall be received in evidence or otherwise disclosed in any trial, hearing, or other proceeding in or before any court, grand jury, department, office, agency, regulatory body, legislative committee, or other authority of the United States, a State, or political subdivision thereof, and no information concerning any United States person acquired from such surveillance shall subsequently be used or disclosed in any other manner by Federal officers or employees without the consent of such person, except with the approval of the Attorney General if the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.
So the information collected isn't intended for use in any trial, proceeding, etc, and will only be actionable if it turns out to be orders to go blow up more buildings full of people. Sure sounds like one of the primary purposes of gathering foreign intelligence in the first place. Why get a warrant, whose purpose is to legitimize trials, to do these taps if it isn't headed for trial in the first place???
domestic surveilance
Everyone in this thread, including the editor, convienently leaves out the "half", as in "half domestic surveilance". When a known Al-Q person outside the USA calls or contacts someone inside, the NSA tries to listen in. So how exactly is it a huge problem that one person in the US is being spied upon because a known terrorist on a short list calls him? Tell me with a straight face anyone seriously expects the NSA get a warrant ahead of time in a world of disposable cell phones. Anyway, if Osama calls me I'd prefer the NSA listened in; I'll try to keep him on the line long enough for the Predator drone to home in on his originating signal.
The US Constitution is not a suicide pact.